Government of Karnataka introduces MobileOne, Dial 161

For the first time in India, citizens of Karnataka state can now connect with the Government and businesses with unprecedented ease. Anytime, Anywhere and Anyhow. Powered by one unified and fully integrated platform, services on multiple departments and various citizen-centric private services are available through One URL, One App and One Short-code.

I am pretty impressed on the number of departments which are included in this portal. To name a few – BESCOM (Electricity), BWSSB (water), Banking, Police, Healthcare, Transport, Telecom, Municipal, Travel, Tourism, Passport, Employment, Taxations, Registrations, Grievance, Legal, Agriculture, Safety, Education, Postal and many more.

MobileOne is accessible across all mobile operators and all channels from anywhere in India. Modes to reach MobileOne; and register:

The President of India, ShriPranab Mukherjee, today inaugurated the country’s first and world’s largest multi-mode mobile governance platform with over 4500 services here. Called Karnataka MobileOne, the platform’s launch was presided by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri Siddaramaiah. The Hon’ble Governor of Karnataka, Shri Vajubhai Vala was the chief guest at this event.

This initiative makes Karnataka the first state in India to launch a unified mobile platform for the delivery of citizens’ services, both from government and the private sector through an open platform, which can accept any service and is thus future-proof. These anytime, anywhere, anyhow services will be available 24x7x365 days at any location in the state on any mobile device.

The Karnataka Mobile One platform services can be availed even on simple low-end phones through integrated voice response (IVR), SMS or Mobile Web, so that the common man can access these services.

Through this initiative, citizens of Karnataka can now pay utility bills, property tax, book railway and bus tickets, file income tax, m-passport, driving licenses and do many more citizen related activities with their smartphones. Over 4,500 services including G2C, B2C and G2B services can be availed by Karnataka-based citizens through this pioneering initiative.

Citizens can even take a simple picture of a non-functioning services such as potholes or streetlights and send it automatically to the concerned officials for redressal through smart geo tagging. This initiative named as “ICARE”, is a one-of-a-kind government-citizen engagement model.

The app is available for download on Android and iOS platforms and all major mobile service providers, such as Airtel, BSNL, Vodafone, Aircel, Idea and Reliance, are on board with the platform. Citizens can access all services through this platform by dialing a unique 3-digit #161.

The Karnataka Mobile One will integrate digital media and advertising going forward to enable it to be a self-sustaining model to pay for some select services via advertising revenue, user fees and subscription models. Payments through a variety of modes including debit cards, credit cards, online wallet, PayGov are enabled. Payments are also integrated through multiple methods of online payments by citizens including introduction of the “Karnataka Wallet”.

The country’s first mobile-governance platform is done in the Public-Private Partnership mode with IMI Mobile, one of the world’s largest mobile value-added services companies. A new Twitter alerts system for government announcements and emergency actions, along with integration with Facebook, is also in the pipeline.